Crossing Boundaries

The Crossing Boundaries component includes four categories of courses (Faith Traditions, Practical Ethical Action, Inquiry and Integrative courses) that challenge students and faculty to link aspects of their own lives, majors, and careers to a broader world within and outside academia.

Faith Traditions

GOALS

The course on Faith Traditions is designed to encourage students to better understand, reflect on and place their own religious beliefs and experiences in a broader historical or cultural context.

REQUIREMENTS

Courses satisfying the Faith Traditions component may be offered by any department provided that the courses incorporate some of the ideas from the introductory religious studies course and that they develop students’ ability to examine their own faith commitments and to participate in dialogue with other faith traditions.

APPROVED CROSS BOUNDARIES - Faith Traditions COURSES

ENG 311: Literature for the Common Good. Study of the relationship between literature and the common good, with attention to diverse faith traditions as represented in fiction and poetry. Emphasis on literature's role both in promoting critical reflection on one's own faith commitments and in supporting imaginative encounters with religious diversity.

ENG 314: Faith Traditions in Popular Fictions. Explores a range of faith traditions and their representations in literature, specifically in the imaginative and fictional texts produced for or delivered to popular audiences.

ENG 364: The Arguments and Visual Rhetoric of Religious Traditions. Study of the practical arguments (such as confessions, public arguments, and statements of belief) and visual rhetoric (such as worship practices, dress, church architecture, and ministries) of two religious traditions.

Practical Ethical Action

GOALS

The Practical Ethical Action course is designed to cross the boundaries between the theoretical and the practical, and between the liberal arts and the applied fields.

REQUIREMENTS

The course offers the opportunity for faculty to cross the boundaries of their own disciplines to dialogue with faculty from other disciplines in ways that enrich their own understanding of important ethical issues and that enrich the courses they offer to students. Courses satisfying the practical ethical action component may be offered by any department provided that the courses engage students in thick description and analysis of ethical issues using concepts central to the study of ethics such as justice, rights, natural law, conscience or forgiveness, and that the courses provide sufficient normative content that allow students to reflect on value judgments and ethical reasoning and practical application.

APPROVED CROSS BOUNDARIES - Practical Ethical Action COURSES

ENG 342: Literature and the Environment.Study of global environmental literature, fiction and non-fiction, focusing on issues of environmental justice and sustainability and how they intersect with race, class, gender, and place.

Inquiry﻿

GOALS

By taking a course outside one’s major, students learn different philosophies and approaches that translate to new ways of problem solving.

REQUIREMENTS

The Inquiry component of CAP requires that students select a course outside their own division to better understand the ways of knowing found in other academic disciplines. The Inquiry course will serve as an introduction to key methods of investigation, interpretation, exploration, and ways of knowing. This course will also include a reflective and comparative component in which a student examines methods in his or her major field with those in the field of the Inquiry course.

APPROVED CROSS BOUNDARIES - INQUIRY COURSES

ENG 318: Detective Fiction. Introduction to detective fiction, focusing on its developments, conventions, subgenres and themes including crime and concepts of justice while developing student’s critical reading and writing skills.

ENG 336: Gender and Fiction. The study of the relationship between gender and fiction.

ENG 359: Discourse Analysis. Study of methods for critical analysis of discourse in contemporary social contexts. Emphasis on techniques for analyzing language as social practice.

ENG 372: Business and Professional Writing. Analysis and practice in effective workplace communication. Emphasis on rhetorical elements to produce documents for both business and professional situations.

ENG 373: Writing in the Health Professions. Intensive practice in reading and writing for the healthcare professions. Critical reading, analysis, and reflection on issues, trends, and texts in healthcare.

ENG 375: Writing for the Web. Study of the theory and practice of writing rhetorically effective website content and producing websites. Focuses on writing and editing effective web content that engages users.

Integrative﻿

GOALS

The unification of subjects and classes plays an important role in understanding contemporary social issues and problems.

REQUIREMENTS

The Integrative course in the CAP requires students select a course that transcends disciplinary boundaries and explicitly examines significant social issues or problems in a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary framework. Collaborative, interdisciplinary efforts by faculty are encouraged but not required for this course.

APPROVED CROSS BOUNDARIES - INTEGRATIVE COURSES

ENG 307: Varieties of English. Introduction to regional, social, and ethnic varieties of English in North America and throughout the world, focusing on the relationships among English language use, culture, power, status, and identity.

ENG 313: Social Justice & Dramatic Literature (cross-listed): Survey of dramatic literature that engages issues pertaining to diversity and social justice. Survey may include domestic and global dramatic literatures that grapple with processes of identity, representation, and performing the “other.”

ENG 321: Reading Popular Music. A focus on popular music texts through scholarly approaches. The course will emphasize critical reading and writing skills while being applied to the popular music through secondary sources.

ENG 340: US Prison Literature and Culture. Introduction to some of the major voices that have emerged from the prison system from the rise of the modern prison in the late eighteenth century to the contemporary period. There will be an emphasis on multiple literary texts and films through critical engagement.

ENG 349: Children’s Literature and Culture. Interdisciplinary study of children’s literature and culture as diverse, historical, social and artistic expressions.

ENG 352: Appalachian Literature and Culture: Study of the Appalachian literary and cultural production through experiential engagement and a multidisciplinary framework.

ENG 360: US Latina/Latino Literature. Introduction to the diverse cultures and literary forms that define Latina/o literature, along with appropriate interpretive methods for thinking, researching, and writing about Latina/o literature.

ENG 366: Health Literacy and Social Justice. The study of health literacy from a public health and social justice perspective, examining the impact of limited health literacy on people’s access to and understanding of written health care information.

ENG 392: Writing for Grants and Non-Profits. Practice in the genres related to the non-profit sector, including proposals, letters, and reports. Experiential learning and civic engagement through partnership with local non-profits to identify community needs and seek funding for projects addressing those needs through targeted grant proposals and related documents.

ENG 466: TESOL Methods for Teaching English Language Learners (cross-listed). Introduction to key concepts in Teaching English to speakers of other languages. Students will investigate approaches to teaching the four skills of English (reading, writing, listening and speaking) across varying contexts and proficiency levels.